Two people who were yesterday cut off by the rising tide at the mouth of the River Tees at Hartlepool refused a lifeboat rescue unless the emergency services also agreed to save their shopping trolley full of driftwood.
The Maritime And Coastguard Agency (MCA) explains that at 4:14 pm, Humber Coastguard received a report of a …

Hypothermia can do that to you

That argument doesn't hold, as hypothermia will make you very confused, and push you to wrong decisions. So this kind of death sentence is a bit unwarranted.

That said, I'd send them the bill for about £2500 in helicopter time etc. For that price I'd bring their wood home with a taxi though. Also they're clearly guilty of stealing a shopping trolley, the chance they bought it honestly being nil.

Letting people drive off in such a state moves the danger from themselves to other road users and seems borderline criminal.

Re: hypothermia

Indeed, hypothermia can make you confused and stubborn. Mild hypothermia, not so much - start shivering when your cold, get goosebumps and technically that's "mild hypothermia". The resounding hole in the argument is that *she* was suffering it. He was just fine and dandio from the report I read (the linked official one).

awwww

Quick put them on the TV

They're ideal first contestants in a new gameshow that I'm designing "Are you smarter than a Pidgeon?" ... they'd obviously lose to the feathered feather-brains.

I'm a supporter of the RNLI and it really steams me to think that these bozo's were effectively trying to blackmail the responding crew into taking their junk. Heck, the crew are giving up their time, and possibly putting their lives at risk. Can the CPS wrangle a conviction for "wasting police time" and get these cretins on some community service?

Oh - one question on the comment about the plod who "seized the wood and threw it in the river" - I'm assuming that (a) there wasn't an envronmentally suitable alternative disposal method? and (b) that the lumber wasn't going to cause a "hazard to navigation". Be awful if the plod-dumped timber then holed the hull of some poor dinghy or yacht. Doh!

Icon because your average Somali pirate shows more sense than the subjects of this article.

Sincerely hope they get billed

Lifeboats are paid for by OUR DONATIONS and manned (peopled?) by selfless individuals who risk their lives to help.I would like to think the people who are saved would be just the slightest bit grateful for the risks that strangers take on their behalf (though in practice, most aren't).

The last time I looked into it, many years ago, our local cops reckoned it cost £900 / hour for their helicopter to wake up 10,000 people in the middle of the night - and I suspect it costs much more now. It would be nice to know that at least some of their costs (as well as the lifeboat costs) could be passed on to the induhviduals who exploited the unwillingness of these crews to leave them to their fate.

Should have applied Darwin's laws...

I think I've got it!

I presume these were the famous pieces of driftwood that once were branches of the trees used to hang the monkeys in Hartlepool, all those years ago.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_hanger for reference.

I've mailed Jeff Stelling of Sky Sports asking him to confirm this speculation.

Well

It was guilty

But ...

... presumably not before it bred into the community, since it's these fuckwits seem likely to be it's descendants!

I'm not often in a position where I have to praise the police, but throwing the driftwood back into the river - real justice! I am a bit concerned about them being allowed to drive themselves away, though - making them walk home would have been even better!!

Mmm.....

Difficult to know the whole truth from this report. It could be a bunch of people making a big fuss about nothing. Within an hour the tide would have been down by about a metre anyway and they probably could have just walked away. And knowing what today's nanny-state terminology is like, "minor hypothermia" could well be what our parents' generation knew as "a bit chilly".

Geography lesson required.

Hartlepool, is miles up the coast from the mouth of the Tees river.

@Haku. When I was a bairn you'd often see people usually poor, with handcarts made from prams or any sort of wheels and axles, transporting scrap wood or coal, as they where really hard up. You'd see them scavenging the sea coal on the black middens, a coal seam that was exposed at low tide. Over the last few years I've noticed that they have reappeared, sometimes carts, sometimes shopping trolleys or adapted baby buggies. Nice to see that after 13 years of Labour gangsters in government we are back to those dark days of poverty.

Notice that they did not call for rescue, and the wonderful police confiscated the wood and threw it in the river. ACAB.

yeah

Bloody good point...

I was going to post the same myself. Any boyscout would know the symptoms of hypothermia include not knowing that anything is wrong with you, irrational behaviour etc.

@Some of the other commentors, please try to see other sides of stories before making a reactionary comment like "they should have been left there to die" especially as this is the sort of comment that would be condemed by most here if it appeared in a certain daily right wing newpaper.

RE: Police littering

Throwing the wood in the river...

errr, wasn't the problem that they were collecting the driftwood and the tide came in.

Isn't the driftwood just going to wash ashore again, encouraging the idiots to go back for it ? Let's face it, given their proven track record or refusing to be rescued then refusing medical assistance, they clearly haven't learned of the dangers.

Perhaps the driftwood should have been rescued and they protagonists thrown in the river - the wood clearly has more intelligence.

Re:Geography lesson required

But doesn't a good captain...

I really can't believe you lot

First of all, they didn't ask for the massive over-zealous rescue attempt. They were merely scavenging for driftwood and got a bit wet and chilly. Big deal, none of this is even slightly illegal, except perhaps the twocing of a shopping trolley.

Minor Hypothermia = shivering. Again, bigo dealo.

The real story here are the police acting illegally in seizing the driftwood which they had no power to do, and secondly the clearly illegal disposal of said driftwood.

I donate to the RNLI they are mostly a wonderful service and deserve great praise for most of what they do (although they can keep their patronizing periodicals). Any of you lot who cite Darwin or think these people must be idiots really must learn to read properly. Jeez. Monday already.

True, I can't believe you either

AJ said "First of all, they didn't ask for the massive over-zealous rescue attempt. They were merely scavenging for driftwood and got a bit wet and chilly."

I'm guessing (apologies if I'm wrong) that the Coasties that were there first have enough medical training to recognise hypothermia. Madam had it (okay minor) so unless the bozo-two had a boat of their own standing by then they needed rescue. The clue to this is in the word "stranded" in the second para of Lester's article - and if you missed that then there's two uses of the phrase "cut off" to backstop it..

So if they had left them, then they may have collected their Darwin Award, in which case the Scum (and other tabloid bogpaper) would be screaming "Hartle-plod lets couple die" or similar, questions in Parliment, etc.

Be interesting to understand if Mr Bozo had noticed that 'er indoors was no well, in which case surely he'd want her rescued.

Still, it all ended happily, no one got hurt/killed, and some folks get a laugh at their expense.